


your city lies in dust, my friend

by KDblack



Series: Dragon Ball Collection [9]
Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: "guess I'll die", Depression, Gen, Goku: makes a mistake, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Son Goku's C+ Parenting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:54:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25761694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KDblack/pseuds/KDblack
Summary: As a child, Goku hardly noticed the passage of time.
Relationships: Son Gohan & Son Goku
Series: Dragon Ball Collection [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1696063
Comments: 33
Kudos: 67





	your city lies in dust, my friend

**Author's Note:**

> Additional warnings at the end of the fic.

As a child, Goku hardly noticed the passage of time. Days drifted past like clouds in the sky. Weeks followed. Months stood out a bit because of the cycling of the moon, which he never failed to follow despite faithfully avoiding its light. Years? Years were too hard to get more than a feeble grasp on. The numbers slipped through his clumsy fingers. 

Then Grandpa died, and after that, what was the point in keeping track? Time didn't matter on his mountain. Seasons mattered, the moon mattered, but that was it. He lived second by second in a place where only one voice filled the air.

Bulma crashing into his life changed some things, but not enough. Not this. The rise and ebb of the Dragon Balls became just one more aspect of the world he understood. If he pressed his ear to one, closed his eyes and listened real hard, he could feel it – the wellspring of energy inside, swirling slowly like watery rice, waiting for someone to open the pot. 

Yamcha and Pu'ar arrived. Kuririn arrived. Muten Roshi arrived. So many lives gathered around Goku's, streams crossing on their own separate journeys, and still Goku did not understand. Bulma's hair changed like the leaves in autumn. Yamcha picked up more scars the way a mountain crumbled beneath your feet. Kuririn became kinder in the fashion of a well-worn blanket. So did Muten Roshi, but he'd deny it if you called him out.

Goku missed his own growth spurt. Oh, he knew it was happening, but it never occurred to him that anyone else might have trouble recognizing him. He'd never figured out how to use the curves of a body or the shape of a face as landmarks, though he did learn to fake it eventually, and like anyone learning a second language, he had a tendency to overlook seemingly basic things. That same year, he failed to recognize Chi-Chi, not because she'd grown up – she had – but because she'd changed the way she fought. Goku did recognize Piccolo, or rather Piccolo, Jr, but back then the Namekian was still shrouded in his father's legacy. He too was timeless.

The first time Goku became dimly aware of how quickly time could move, he was lying in a hospital bed and Gohan was sitting beside him, smiling weakly. They were both aching, a bone-deep pain there were no words for. A chasm yawned open between them. One year was four seasons, twelve full moons, a single gathering of the Dragon Balls. Enough time to turn his son into someone he didn't know.

If Goku had understood what was happening then, he would've said something. Would've clambered stubbornly across that gap before it got too wide. But his awareness was short, and brief, and complicated by distracting thoughts and irrational fears. He said nothing. 

The next time he saw Gohan, it was on Namek, and his son was dying in his arms. Staring eyes. Broken neck. Emptiness. The emptiness remained when the senzu bean had banished everything else. During the long, long trip to Yardrat and the year of training to control himself, Goku would have lots of time to wonder if Kuririn's second death would've hit as hard as it did without the image of Gohan's sightless eyes backing it up.

When he got back from Yardrat, he'd changed. Super Saiyan seethed under his skin, barely contained, dreaming of blood and slaughter. His friends were exactly as he remembered them, except for Bulma, who'd changed her hair again. Vegeta hadn't changed either, not really. Gohan...

Gohan had gotten taller. His hair was longer, too. Goku's hands itched to card through it. But when he raised his hand questioningly, Gohan just blinked at him, and the chasm grew deeper.

Once upon a time, the two of them were so close that Goku never had to say a word to be understood. Gohan clung to words now. Used them as his supports. He spent so much time with books that he was forgetting how to read his father, and Goku didn't know how to fix this. Maybe it couldn't be fixed. Time was still slipping through Goku's fingers. The only difference was that now he noticed.

Sometime between Trunks' first departure and the Androids' activation, Bulma said something about it. “You're almost thirty and you still look eighteen? Saiyan genetics are completely unfair.”

Goku laughed it off, but something about that statement lingered, a thorn in the sole of his foot. Hadn't he changed with the seasons like the rest of them? Grandpa would've told him if he didn't. Only he'd still been growing back then, and he wasn't growing now. 

Would he know if he didn't age? He'd never been good at remembering people, least of all himself.

When Gohan was eleven and already taller than Goku'd been at sixteen, it became clear. Time was passing. Goku had felt it flow around him all his life, hours and days and seasons bleeding into each other, but he hadn't known it before. Not the way Chi-Chi did, the creases around her eyes growing starker each time he looked away. Not the way Vegeta did, throwing everything he had into everything he did, like each moment could be ripped away from him. Not the way Gohan did, looking down at little hands with scars on every knuckle, mouth firm but eyes trembling. As though he couldn't recognize those hands, those scars, as his own.

His son grew older while the years slid off Goku's back like water. One spire of rock jutting up from the ocean as everything around it was worn away. People you loved could die, but they weren't supposed to become someone you didn't know. It hurt to think about. 

At the Cell Games, things finally clicked into place. Gohan loved him. But Gohan didn't need him anymore. A weight fell of Goku's shoulders even as the rest of him went hollow. Words were hard, but Gohan liked them, so Goku stumbled his way through an explanation. It probably wasn't a good one. He didn't have much time. 

What he didn't say: _it's okay. Sooner or later, everything you love goes somewhere else. You can follow their tracks if you really miss them. Otherwise, it's just one more mountain to climb._

He knew that Gohan could climb any mountain. Losing him would hurt, but that was okay, too. If life had taught Goku one thing, it was this: if you never feel pain, you'll never find out who you are.

And so he stepped into the flow of time and came out the other side, untouched, forever. 

It took him seven years to identify the taste of regret.

**Author's Note:**

> Goku is in a very bad headspace throughout this entire fic and it ends with him committing suicide during the Cell Games as per canon. If that sounds like a bad time, don't read it. Love yourself.


End file.
